An acquaintance of mine recently purchased a Philips 42PFL7606K/02 TV. Because he isn't much of a techy person, and my English is substantially better than his, I have registered on the Philips Support Forum on his behalf, so that I can better assist him with any issues he might encounter with his new TV.

I don't think it's relevant to my question, but for the sake of completeness, the firmware version currently installed on my friend's TV is Q5551-0.14.97.0.

My question pertains to the maximum allowable length of the Ethernet cable that is used to connect the television set to a router, in order to gain access to the Internet and use the TV's Internet and network based functionality, e.g. NetTV.

The user manual for the Philips 42PFL7606K stipulates that the Ethernet cable used for a wired LAN connection be shorter than 3 meters. (This information can be found on page 52, left column, of the English manual, under the subheading “What you need”, and on page 63, right column, of the German manual, under the subheading “Was wird benötigt?”.)

In order for my friend to be able to connect his TV to his router via cable, the Ethernet cable would have to be 10 meters long. Moving the router close enough to the TV so that a cable shorter than 3 meters could be used is not a practical solution for him.

Of course, there is always the option of using the Philips PTA01 USB wireless adapter to establish network connectivity, however, I think that generally it is safe to say that a wired connection provides faster and more stable data transfer rates than the wireless connection via the PTA01.

Why does Philips stipulate that the Ethernet cable used to connect the TV to a router be shorter than 3 meters?

I did some research on the Internet to try and find an answer before posting here, and the only references to the <3 meter constraint I came up with were in these documents: [Reference 1 (http://www.wbdg.org/ccb/AF/AFETL/etl_02_12.pdf): 8.3.3.1. on pg. 11], [Reference 2 (ftp://209.210.173.82/USAFA%20CAD-Design%20Standards%20R4/A-E%20SG%20&%20USAFA%20DS%20-%20Feb%202012%20Working%20Files/Working%20Files/03-Appendix%20A/D%20-%20Communications%20Standards/02-Systems%20and%20Wire-Cable%20Specifications.pdf): 1.5.2 on pg. 5], [Reference 3 (http://www.anixter.com/axecom/axedoclib.nsf/%28unid%29/b9842e9f66fb8c5f86256f88007906be/$file/568-b.pdf): Diagram at the top of pg. 12, under the subheading “Maximum Distances for Horizontal Cabling” and pg. 24 under subheading “Jumper/Patch Cord Maximum Length Limitations:”].

However, most of the documents I found that referenced the TIA/EIA-568-B standard stated a maximum patch cord “work area” cable length of 5 meters. To add to my confusion, some documents included tables which showed “work area” patch cord length as a function of the horizontal cable length between the telecommunications room and the telecommunications information outlet.

What is important to point out is that all of the TIA/EIA-568 based considerations contained in the aforementioned documents regarding maximum cable length are based on a maximum combined cable length of 100 meters between the active Ethernet device in the telecommunications room and the end user instrument – in this scenario that would be the router – which can include up to 90 meters of horizontal cable. Since this means that there could potentially be up to 100 meters of cable between two active Ethernet devices, these considerations could hardly have been regarded as guidelines when Philips engineers determined the maximum allowable cable length between the TV and an active Ethernet device, i.e. a router/switch or computer, since in all likelihood Philips TVs are used almost exclusively in a home entertainment environment, where one is unlikely to encounter up to 90 meters of “horizontal cabling”.

So, to reiterate my question, what is the reason why the user manual of the Philips 42PFL7606K states that an Ethernet cable that is shorter than 3 meters is to be used when connecting the TV to a router? If this length constraint was derived from a standard, could you please specify the name of the standard and the clause which contains the relevant information.

1.1 Does the <3 meter length constraint only apply to a certain category of Ethernet cable, e.g. Cat. 5? To put it another way, if I used a Cat. 6 or Cat 6a Ethernet cable to connect the TV to a router, would Philips still view the length constraint stated in the manual (<3 meters) as applicable?

1.2 If the <3 meter length constraint must be adhered to no matter what, would it be a solution to connect a switch between the TV and the router as a repeater device in the following manner?: [Philips 42PFL7606K] <---1 meter Ethernet cable ---> [switch] <--- 10 meter Ethernet cable ---> [router]. That means there would only be 1 meter of cable between the TV and the next active Ethernet device.

2. To the owners and/or users of Philips TVs:

If any of you have connected your Philips TV to a router with an Ethernet cable longer than 3 meters and have subsequently had no problems with the TV's Internet/network functionality, could you please post a short description with the following information:

The model number of your TV.
The length of the Ethernet cable used.
The category of the Ethernet cable used, e.g. Cat. 5, Cat. 5e, Cat. 6, Cat. 6a.
Preferably also the make and model of the router the TV was connected to.